FANE FROM SIX SLOW WORDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 782, 16 July 1954, Page 25

FANE FROM SIX SLOW WORDS

"HALLO, everybahdy, this is Carroll Gibbons." You may have forgotten the soft drawl and the gentle rhythms it introduced, but if you were a vadio fan soon after the cat’s-whisker days, you will recall the thrill it was to pull in anything from 2LO London. In those days the sleepy New England croak of Carroll Gibbons and _ his light touch on the piano made him the first real radio personality. At the age of 51 he has now died in the England he loved so much that, when war broke out, he pestered New York shipping offices to get a passage back. "People over there have been nice to me since 1924," he declared with unaccustomed emphasis. "This is no time to run out on them." He started his musical career as a church organist, chiefly to get enough . money to study at the Boston Conservatory. After playing in a band with Rudy Vallee, he went to London as pianist,

at the Berkeley Hotel; later he became band leader of the Savoy Sylvians and then of the Orpheans, both widely broadcast. If he had not. stammered, he might not have been so famous, despite his fine piano playing. A speech specialist told him: "Pitch your voice low. Speak slowly, and you'll lose your stutter." That’s how his "trade mark" was born. However, he kept his popularity by taking immense pains and used to say that he listened to 7000 new songs every time he wanted a selection of 200 tunes. Carroll Gibbons was a great favourite with the Royal Family; he played for many dances at Buckingham Palace and at the silver wedding party of George VI and the Queen Mother. A Carroll-trained band-boy was always a good bet, it used to be said, and George Melachrino was one of his "pupils."

J. W.

GOODWIN

(London)